Chapter 23 - The Kiss

SHE had need of me again. She had claimed me again. I felt all
the old love, all the old devotion owning her power once more.
Whatever had mortified or angered me at our last interview was
forgiven and forgotten now. My whole being still thrilled with
the mingled awe and rapture of beholding the Vision of her that
had come to me for the second time. The minutes passed--and I
stood by the fire like a man entranced; thinking only of her
spoken words, "Remember me. Come to me;" looking only at her
mystic writing, "At the month's end, In the shadow of Saint
Paul's."

The month's end was still far off; the apparition of her had
shown itself to me, under some subtle prevision of trouble that
was still in the future. Ample time was before me for the
pilgrimage to which I was self-dedicated already--my pilgrimage
to the shadow of Saint Paul's. Other men, in my position, might
have hesitated as to the right understanding of the place to
which they were bidden. Other men might have wearied their
memories by recalling the churches, the institutions, the
streets, the towns in foreign countries, all consecrated to
Christian reverence by the great apostle's name, and might have
fruitlessly asked themselves in which direction they were first
to turn their steps. No such difficulty troubled me. My first
conclusion was the one conclusion that was acceptable to my mind.
"Saint Paul's" meant the famous Cathedral of London. Where the
shadow of the great church fell, there, at the month's end, I
should find her, or the trace of her. In London once more, and
nowhere else, I was destined to see the woman I loved, in the
living body, as certainly as I had just seen her in the ghostly
presence.

Who could interpret the mysterious sympathies that still united
us, in defiance of distance, in defiance of time? Who could
predict to what end our lives were tending in the years that were
to come?

Those questions were still present to my thoughts; my eyes were
still fixed on the mysterious writing--when I became
instinctively aware of the strange silence in the room. Instantly
the lost remembrance of Miss Dunross came back to me. Stung by my
own sense of self-reproach, I turned with a start, and looked
toward her chair by the window.

The chair was empty. I was alone in the room.

Why had she left me secretly, without a word of farewell? Because
she was suffering, in mind or body? Or because she resented,
naturally resented, my neglect of her?

The bare suspicion that I had given her pain was intolerable to
me. I rang my bell, to make inquiries.

The bell was answered, not, as usua l, by the silent servant
Peter, but by a woman of middle age, very quietly and neatly
dressed, whom I had once or twice met on the way to and from my
room, and of whose exact position in the house I was still
ignorant.

"Do you wish to see Peter?" she asked.

"No. I wish to know where Miss Dunross is."

"Miss Dunross is in her room. She has sent me with this letter."

I took the letter, feeling some surprise and uneasiness. It was
the first time Miss Dunross had communicated with me in that
formal way. I tried to gain further information by questioning
her messenger.

"Are you Miss Dunross's maid?" I asked.

"I have served Miss Dunross for many years," was the answer,
spoken very ungraciously.

"Do you think she would receive me if I sent you with a message
to her?"

"I can't say, sir. The letter may tell you. You will do well to
read the letter."

We looked at each other. The woman's preconceived impression of
me was evidently an unfavorable one. Had I indeed pained or
offended Miss Dunross? And had the servant--perhaps the faithful
servant who loved her--discovered and resented it? The woman
frowned as she looked at me. It would be a mere waste of words to
persist in questioning her. I let her go.

Left by myself again, I read the letter. It began, without any
form of address, in these lines:

"I write, instead of speaking to you, because my self-control has
already been severely tried, and I am not strong enough to bear
more. For my father's sake--not for my own--I must take all the
care I can of the little health that I have left.

"Putting together what you have told me of the visionary creature
whom you saw in the summer-house in Scotland, and what you said
when you questioned me in your room a little while since, I
cannot fail to infer that the same vision has shown itself to
you, for the second time. The fear that I felt, the strange
things that I saw (or thought I saw), may have been imperfect
reflections in my mind of what was passing in yours. I do not
stop to inquire whether we are both the victims of a delusion, or
whether we are the chosen recipients of a supernatural
communication. The result, in either case, is enough for me. You
are once more under the influence of Mrs. Van Brandt. I will not
trust myself to tell you of the anxieties and forebodings by
which I am oppressed: I will only acknowledge that my one hope
for you is in your speedy reunion with the worthier object of
your constancy and devotion. I still believe, and I am consoled
in believing, that you and your first love will meet again.

"Having written so far, I leave the subject--not to return to it,
except in my own thoughts.

"The necessary preparations for your departure to-morrow are all
made. Nothing remains but to wish you a safe and pleasant journey
home. Do not, I entreat you, think me insensible of what I owe to
you, if I say my farewell words here.

"The little services which you have allowed me to render you have
brightened the closing days of my life. You have left me a
treasury of happy memories which I shall hoard, when you are
gone, with miserly care. Are you willing to add new claims to my
grateful remembrance? I ask it of you, as a last favor--do not
attempt to see me again! Do not expect me to take a personal
leave of you! The saddest of all words is 'Good-by': I have
fortitude enough to write it, and no more. God preserve and
prosper you--farewell!

"One more request. I beg that you will not forget what you
promised me, when I told you my foolish fancy about the green
flag. Wherever you go, let Mary's keepsake go with you. No
written answer is necessary--I would rather not receive it. Look
up, when you leave the house to-morrow, at the center window over
the doorway--that will be answer enough."

To say that these melancholy lines brought the tears into my eyes
is only to acknowledge that I had sympathies which could be
touched. When I had in some degree recovered my composure, the
impulse which urged me to write to Miss Dunross was too strong to
be resisted. I did not trouble her with a long letter; I only
entreated her to reconsider her decision with all the art of
persuasion which I could summon to help me. The answer was
brought back by the servant who waited on Miss Dunross, in four
resolute words: "It can not be." This time the woman spoke out
before she left me. "If you have any regard for my mistress," she
said sternly, "don't make her write to you again." She looked at
me with a last lowering frown, and left the room.

It is needless to say that the faithful servant's words only
increased my anxiety to see Miss Dunross once more before we
parted--perhaps forever. My one last hope of success in attaining
this object lay in approaching her indirectly through the
intercession of her father.

I sent Peter to inquire if I might be permitted to pay my
respects to his master that evening. My messenger returned with
an answer that was a new disappointment to me. Mr. Dunross begged
that I would excuse him, if he deferred the proposed interview
until the next morning. The next morning was the morning of my
departure. Did the message mean that he had no wish to see me
again until the time had come to take leave of him? I inquired of
Peter whether his master was particularly occupied that evening.
He was unable to tell me. "The Master of Books" was not in his
study, as usual. When he sent his message to me, he was sitting
by the sofa in his daughter's room.

Having answered in those terms, the man left me by myself until
the next morning. I do not wish my bitterest enemy a sadder time
in his life than the time I passed during the last night of my
residence under Mr. Dunross's roof.

After walking to and fro in the room until I was weary, I thought
of trying to divert my mind from the sad thoughts that oppressed
it by reading. The one candle which I had lighted failed to
sufficiently illuminate the room. Advancing to the mantel-piece
to light the second candle which stood there, I noticed the
unfinished letter to my mother lying where I had placed it, when
Miss Dunross's servant first presented herself before me. Having
lighted the second candle, I took up the letter to put it away
among my other papers. Doing this (while my thoughts were still
dwelling on Miss Dunross), I mechanically looked at the letter
again--and instantly discovered a change in it.

The written characters traced by the hand of the apparition had
vanished! Below the last lines written by Miss Dunross nothing
met my eyes now but the blank white paper!

My first impulse was to look at my watch.

When the ghostly presence had written in my sketch-book, the
characters had disappeared after an interval of three hours. On
this occasion, as nearly as I could calculate, the writing had
vanished in one hour only.

Reverting to the conversation which I had held with Mrs. Van
Brandt when we met at Saint Anthony's Well, and to the
discoveries which followed at a later period of my life, I can
only repeat that she had again been the subject of a trance or
dream, when the apparition of her showed itself to me for the
second time. As before, she had freely trusted me and freely
appealed to me to help her, in the dreaming state, when her
spirit was free to recognize my spirit. When she had come to
herself, after an interval of an hour, she had again felt ashamed
of the familiar manner in which she had communicated with me in
the trance--had again unconsciously counteracted by her
waking-will the influence of her sleeping-will; and had thus
caused the writing once more to disappear, in an hour from the
moment when the pen had traced (or seemed to trace) it.

This is still the one explanation that I can offer. At the time
when the incident happened, I was far from being fully admitted
to the confidence of Mrs. Van Brandt; and I was necessarily
incapable of arriving at any solution of the mystery, right or
wrong. I could only put away the letter, doubting vaguely whether
my own senses had not deceived me. After the distressing thoughts
which Miss Dunross's letter had roused in my mind, I was in no
humor to employ my ingenuity in finding a clew to the mystery of
the vanished writing. My ner ves were irritated; I felt a sense
of angry discontent with myself and with others. "Go where I may"
(I thought impatiently), "the disturbing influence of women seems
to be the only influence that I am fated to feel." As I still
paced backward and forward in my room--it was useless to think
now of fixing my attention on a book--I fancied I understood the
motives which made men as young as I was retire to end their
lives in a monastery. I drew aside the window curtains, and
looked out. The only prospect that met my view was the black gulf
of darkness in which the lake lay hidden. I could see nothing; I
could do nothing; I could think of nothing. The one alternative
before me was that of trying to sleep. My medical knowledge told
me plainly that natural sleep was, in my nervous condition, one
of the unattainable luxuries of life for that night. The
medicine-chest which Mr. Dunross had placed at my disposal
remained in the room. I mixed for myself a strong sleeping
draught, and sullenly took refuge from my troubles in bed.

It is a peculiarity of most of the soporific drugs that they not
only act in a totally different manner on different
constitutions, but that they are not even to be depended on to
act always in the same manner on the same person. I had taken
care to extinguish the candles before I got into my bed. Under
ordinary circumstances, after I had lain quietly in the darkness
for half an hour, the draught that I had taken would have sent me
to sleep. In the present state of my nerves the draught stupefied
me, and did no more.

Hour after hour I lay perfectly still, with my eyes closed, in
the semi-sleeping, semi-wakeful state which is so curiously
characteristic of the ordinary repose of a dog. As the night wore
on, such a sense of heaviness oppressed my eyelids that it was
literally impossible for me to open them--such a masterful
languor possessed all my muscles that I could no more move on my
pillow than if I had been a corpse. And yet, in this somnolent
condition, my mind was able to pursue lazy trains of pleasant
thought. My sense of hearing was so acute that it caught the
faintest sounds made by the passage of the night-breeze through
the rushes of the lake. Inside my bed-chamber, I was even more
keenly sensible of those weird night-noises in the heavy
furniture of a room, of those sudden settlements of extinct coals
in the grate, so familiar to bad sleepers, so startling to
overwrought nerves! It is not a scientifically correct statement,
but it exactly describes my condition, that night, to say that
one half of me was asleep and the other half awake.

How many hours of the night had passed, when my irritable sense
of hearing became aware of a new sound in the room, I cannot
tell. I can only relate that I found myself on a sudden listening
intently, with fast-closed eyes. The sound that disturbed me was
the faintest sound imaginable, as of something soft and light
traveling slowly over the surface of the carpet, and brushing it
just loud enough to be heard.

Little by little, the sound came nearer and nearer to my bed--and
then suddenly stopped just as I fancied it was close by me.

I still lay immovable, with closed eyes; drowsily waiting for the
next sound that might reach my ears; drowsily content with the
silence, if the silence continued. My thoughts (if thoughts they
could be called) were drifting back again into their former
course, when I became suddenly conscious of soft breathing just
above me. The next moment I felt a touch on my forehead--light,
soft, tremulous, like the touch of lips that had kissed me. There
was a momentary pause. Then a low sigh trembled through the
silence. Then I heard again the still, small sound of something
brushing its way over the carpet; traveling this time _from_ my
bed, and moving so rapidly that in a moment more it was lost in
the silence of the night.

Still stupefied by the drug that I had taken, I could lazily
wonder what had happened, and I could do no more. Had living lips
really touched me? Was the sound that I had heard really the
sound of a sigh? Or was it all delusion, beginning and ending in
a dream? The time passed without my deciding, or caring to
decide, those questions. Minute by minute, the composing
influence of the draught began at last to strengthen its hold on
my brain. A cloud seemed to pass softly over my last waking
impressions. One after another, the ties broke gently that held
me to conscious life. I drifted peacefully into perfect sleep.

Shortly after sunrise, I awoke. When I regained the use of my
memory, my first clear recollection was the recollection of the
soft breathing which I had felt above me--then of the touch on my
forehead, and of the sigh which I had heard after it. Was it
possible that some one had entered my room in the night? It was
quite possible. I had not locked the door--I had never been in
the habit of locking the door during my residence under Mr.
Dunross's roof.

After thinking it over a little, I rose to examine my room.

Nothing in the shape of a discovery rewarded me, until I reached
the door. Though I had not locked it overnight, I had certainly
satisfied myself that it was closed before I went to bed. It was
now ajar. Had it opened again, through being imperfectly shut? or
had a person, after entering and leaving my room, forgotten to
close it?

Accidentally looking downward while I was weighing these
probabilities, I noticed a small black object on the carpet,
lying just under the key, on the inner side of the door. I picked
the thing up, and found that it was a torn morsel of black lace.

The instant I saw the fragment, I was reminded of the long black
veil, hanging below her waist, which it was the habit of Miss
Dunross to wear. Was it _her_ dress, then, that I had heard
softly traveling over the carpet; _her_ kiss that had touched my
forehead; _her_ sigh that had trembled through the silence? Had
the ill-fated and noble creature taken her last leave of me in
the dead of night, trusting the preservation of her secret to the
deceitful appearances which persuaded her that I was asleep? I
looked again at the fragment of black lace. Her long veil might
easily have been caught, and torn, by the projecting key, as she
passed rapidly through the door on her way out of my room. Sadly
and reverently I laid the morsel of lace among the treasured
memorials which I had brought with me from home. To the end of
her life, I vowed it, she should be left undisturbed in the
belief that her secret was safe in her own breast! Ardently as I
still longed to take her hand at parting, I now resolved to make
no further effort to see her. I might not be master of my own
emotions; something in my face or in my manner might betray me to
her quick and delicate perception. Knowing what I now knew, the
last sacrifice I could make to her would be to obey her wishes. I
made the sacrifice.

In an hour more Peter informed me that the ponies were at the
door, and that the Master was waiting for me in the outer hall.

I noticed that Mr. Dunross gave me his hand, without looking at
me. His faded blue eyes, during the few minutes while we were
together, were not once raised from the ground.

"God speed you on your journey, sir, and guide you safely home,"
he said. "I beg you to forgive me if I fail to accompany you on
the first few miles of your journey. There are reasons which
oblige me to remain with my daughter in the house."

He was scrupulously, almost painfully, courteous; but there was
something in his manner which, for the first time in my
experience, seemed designedly to keep me at a distance from him.
Knowing the intimate sympathy, the perfect confidence, which
existed between the father and daughter, a doubt crossed my mind
whether the secret of the past night was entirely a secret to Mr.
Dunross. His next words set that doubt at rest, and showed me the
truth.

In thanking him for his good wishes, I attempted also to express
to him (and through him to Miss Dunross) my sincere sense of
gratitude for the kindness which I had received under his roof.
He stopped me, politely and resolutely, speaking with that
quaintly precise choice of language which I h ad remarked as
characteristic of him at our first interview.

"It is in your power, sir," he said, "to return any obligation
which you may think you have incurred on leaving my house. If you
will be pleased to consider your residence here as an unimportant
episode in your life, which ends--_absolutely_ ends--with your
departure, you will more than repay any kindness that you may
have received as my guest. In saying this, I speak under a sense
of duty which does entire justice to you as a gentleman and a man
of honor. In return, I can only trust to you not to misjudge my
motives, if I abstain from explaining myself any further."

A faint color flushed his pale cheeks. He waited, with a certain
proud resignation, for my reply. I respected her secret,
respected it more resolutely than ever, before her father.

"After all that I owe to you, sir," I answered, "your wishes are
my commands." Saying that, and saying no more, I bowed to him
with marked respect, and left the house.

Mounting my pony at the door, I looked up at the center window,
as she had bidden me. It was open; but dark curtains, jealously
closed, kept out the light from the room within. At the sound of
the pony's hoofs on the rough island road, as the animal moved,
the curtains were parted for a few inches only. Through the gap
in the dark draperies a wan white hand appeared; waved
tremulously a last farewell; and vanished from my view. The
curtains closed again on her dark and solitary life. The dreary
wind sounded its long, low dirge over the rippling waters of the
lake. The ponies took their places in the ferryboat which was
kept for the passage of animals to and from the island. With
slow, regular strokes the men rowed us to the mainland and took
their leave. I looked back at the distant house. I thought of her
in the dark room, waiting patiently for death. Burning tears
blinded me. The guide took my bridle in his hand: "You're not
well, sir," he said; "I will lead the pony."

When I looked again at the landscape round me, we had descended
in the interval from the higher ground to the lower. The house
and the lake had disappeared, to be seen no more.